Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically start generating web traffic is add new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the automation process. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing as you begin to add fresh content regularly on your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth looking into every opportunity you can to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge competitive advantage. With an expertly configured website, you have a flying start as soon as your site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is going fine in the widget factory when things grind to a sudden halt.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks straight towards the main control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for what seems like 2 minutes or less, the expert then produces a tiny hammer and makes a very gentle tap about three cm from the bottom-right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything begins working once more.
The manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Furious, the manager picks up the phone and dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your site fully set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many challenges often seems ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up and activate to achieve certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that processes will work the way you have planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, configuring some settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different parts such as your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
External Sites & Solutions – Configuration
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published to one central location (your site) and from there, be distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external services to your traffic network, content linking back to your site gets automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, use this information to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add tracking information to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account, you can use this information to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social accounts in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add an RSS feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your account.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping all the update services you have listed when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your web sites.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your options and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog, go here:
WordPress Categories And Tags
Post categories & post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your web pages.
(Categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engine bots can read XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong web address into their browser or click on a link pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to attract new traffic is add new content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process can take some website professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To continue reading, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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